Spring 2020 will be remembered as a time of disruption into the global education system as schools were forced to close and switch to distance learning for several weeks or months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to prevent the spread of the virus and high infection rates, governments around the world imposed strict school closure measures which required a rapid and hasty switch into online teaching formats (Haug et al., 2020). With the COVID-19 school closures, emergency remote teaching (ERT) was implemented (Bozkurt & Sharma, 2020). This meant that teachers had to find other ways to teach their students, e.g. by teaching online using learning management platforms and additional digital media. Although efforts were made to immediately adapt to ERT, educational researchers and practitioners worldwide agreed that disadvantaged and vulnerable students were going to fall further behind, aggravating existing social inequalities and widening the educational gap (Huber et al., 2020). In this vein, technical equipment, for example, became an important topic in terms of educational equality as students required the appropriate equipment in order to actively participate in online classes. Similarly, students with special education needs were severely affected by ERT (Goldan et al., 2020). In the context of this challenging situation caused by the COVID-19 school closures, information has been required to urgently provide information that could inform education policy and practice (Huber & Helm, 2020). Nonetheless, even though it has been strongly suggested to conduct cross-country research (OECD, 2020), there is still few cross-country studies that explore variations across countries, in particular concerning inclusive teaching and learning. The study explores teachers’ and parents’ support for at risk students and the implementation of inclusive teaching practices during the first COVID-19 school closures in three countries: Germany, Austria, and Portugal. The present study analyses data from the SCHELLE project, otherwise known as Students-Parents-Teachers in Homeschooling (Letzel et al., 2020). This project was implemented in Germany, Austria, and Portugal. Data collection was carried out from April till July 2020 (first COVID-19 school closure), while data analyses were conducted using mixed analyses of variance. Results indicate that teachers’ and parents’ perceptions of the support for at risk students as well as implementation of inclusive teaching practices varied significantly between the countries. Discussion and implications of the results will be presented in the session highlighting the central role that inclusive teaching has in distant learning, in particular for students at risk.

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